


The Witchling

by nestasbucket



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Canon Universe, Kingdom of Ash, Multi, Original Character(s), Sarah J Maas, Throne of Glass, Witches, canon divergent plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-08-21 03:24:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16568717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nestasbucket/pseuds/nestasbucket
Summary: A witch with no family or coven discovers who she really is in the midst of her world's upheaval. Takes place during and after the events of Kingdom of Ash.





	1. Chapter 1

With the arrow notched, she pulled back as the tension from the bow flowed through her fingers, up the wiry muscles of her arm, and settled in her shoulder. Her strength stringing her entire body taut in the anticipation of the kill. The forest was silent, as if the animals had gone into hiding as the war devoured all in its path, a deathly pall cast over the land as Erawen’s forces pushed mercilessly through.

A wave of warmth crested over her, some ancient stirring of purpose in her blood, and her eyes narrowed on the deer as it slowed and sniffed at the bushes growing at the base of a tree. The brush was thick between them, her shot susceptible to any number of branches and obstructions diverting it away from the pulsing life in the deer’s neck.

Anya’s eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared as she smelled its fear, heard its heart speed up. Now or never. If she killed it here, deep in the forest, she’d have to drag it miles or risk the larger, more fearsome creatures sniffing her out as she field dressed it. Her gut rumbled, and she thought of the dwindling reserves in her coin bag.

Now.

Before the first arrow hit, she had another one notched and leapt lithely over razor-sharp brambles and fallen branches, in pursuit of the stumbling animal. Anya lowered the bow as the deer’s front legs collapsed and it toppled to the ground, blood spurting from its neck, its eyes unfocused. Dropping to her knees, she rested her palm on the doe’s chest, the last rise and fall fading under her fingertips.

A whispered _thank you_ passed over her lips.

She pulled the knife from its sheath at her side and slit the animal’s throat, the blood blackening the soil around her boots. A winter wind shifted from the north and she sucked in a breath, wary of a turn in the weather. She needed the hide, and whatever meat she could carry. No time to dawdle.

Her mother hadn’t taught her to hunt. There was no need for it in the cramped and lifeless streets where they’d lived. There was no father to pass on his knowledge of tracking prey. She had been thrust into the world, listless and unprepared.  And when she could not bear another day of hiding in the alleys, begging for scraps, praying that her nails stayed hidden, she wandered into the world. Into the woods.

In those first days in the wilderness on her own, she’d kept her nails out, bursting from behind trees to chase down rabbits and slashing at them wildly until their bodies stopped twitching. After a month of this meager, wild existence she came upon a bow and quiver full of arrows. Left on a dead, fallen tree lined with fungi. She had circled it, watched it from afar for hours before approaching. Sniffing the air, she had drawn a deep breath, scanning the branches. Only one creature had lingered in the wood that day. An osprey, perched in the highest branches of a white pine, unmoving and unconcerned with her presence.

Anya carried that bow every day thereafter, the oil from her skin staining the wood where her fingers wrapped around it. Nicks and scrapes peppering every last inch of it until it read like a timeline of her life.

Rising now from her crouched position, she stretched the tight muscles of her arms, and froze when a gust of wind swirled around her face. Unable to move, unable to articulate in her mind what she was feeling, the knife fell from her hand, sticking in the ground. The smell that flooded her nostrils nearly dropped her, her legs shaking not in fear, but in the instinctual drive to run to it. She smelled...home.

But not the home she’d grown up in. Not the cold stone floors of the single room that opened up into a dark alley where no life sprouted from the cracks in the cobblestones. Not the pungent scents of the dyes her mother soaked fabric in, nor the tang of mold on the crusts of old bread she stole from the bakers’ wagons.

Her mother. She had smelled of sweat and candle wax and wool. Her eyes had been swallowed by aging skin as the years progressed. Her hands no longer cradled a child, but curved painfully around needles, laboring for pittance.

Home became meaningless the day her mother had begged her to leave. When her mother had stared down in horror at the iron nails jutting from Anya’s fingers, and iron teeth slicing through her lips. _I am not your mother, Anya. I took you, but I cannot keep you. You must go. Don’t let them find you. Go!_

So she went. Barely more than a child. At some point she stopped counting years, could no longer recall how old she was. But home had long since disappeared. The woman she had called her mother, long dead.

She was a witch. Fatherless. Motherless. Covenless.

Anya dropped to her knees on blood-soaked leaves and hoisted the carcass over her shoulders, the animal’s life still draining from it, coating her arm in its sticky warmth. Had she been capable of rational thought, she’d have stayed where she was. But her body moved of its own accord, a desperate pull from a string tied around her ribs. Her legs burned under the weight as she pressed through the underbrush, trekking deep into the forest, the smell intoxicating. Night crept over the tree canopy and shadowed the way until she felt she was walking blind, drawn only by the pull of this place, the smell growing stronger with each step.

Pushing through a thicket of saplings, struggling to find light in the dense wood, she came upon a clearing. Or, what once might have been called a clearing, now grown over with tangled brush and small trees. And in the center, bursting from the lush forest, rose a cabin, covered with vines, lichen clinging to its foundation. It was old and appeared abandoned. No signs of feet trodding the exterior, no clinging smell of soot from fires. Lifeless. And still, her arms shook with the desire to reach out and touch the walls, as if they would speak to her.

Moving to the front, she stepped onto the porch, and dropped the deer to the floor with a heavy thud, rolling her shoulders to loosen her tight muscles. Her braid, which she often wore over her shoulder, was soaked with blood. A chair, enveloped by cobwebs, sat below a window with glass coated in muck and mire from years of neglect. That the forest hadn’t completely swallowed this cabin seemed something of a miracle.

Anya tried the door and found it would not budge at first push. Had someone died inside years ago, their skeleton waiting for a visitor? Perhaps it was locked. She backed up and steadied herself, then slammed the bottom of her boot at the center. It flew open in a cloud of dust, revealing one room, furnished with a small table, a bed, and a hearth. The skeleton she found, however, was merely a pile of rodent bones. Whomever had lived here had not died here.

She pulled the deer carcass in behind her and closed the door, sealing out the cold, howling wind that had descended. Her skin prickled at the stillness, that feeling she’d first felt. The smell and pull of home, it overwhelmed her now.

Memories flitted over her skin like ghosts, images of this room in another time. The hearth crackling, a cooking kettle swaying over the fire, a spoon clinking against the lip. She felt the heat of it as certain as she felt the stickiness of drying blood on her hands.

_How can I know a place I’ve never been?_

She pulled a log from the stack against the wall, wondering how long ago it was cut, and began piling wood in the hearth. A few minutes of flint and steel and patience yielded flames and a glow rose in the room as night descended. She’d go nowhere tonight.

The room was spare, the bare minimum of life’s requirements shrouded in dust around her. A small chest sat at the foot of the bed and she stared at it, willing it to silence itself. Speaking in an ancient voice, carried on the wind, this place has beckoned her. Her stomach grumbled and jolted her from her trance.

Anya turned to the animal behind her and drew her knife, her iron nails itching below the surface. They’d threatened to appear since she’d walked into the clearing, as if they too were called by it. In the glow of the hearthfire now, a vision formed. She saw hands, not her own, iron nails glinting in the firelight, tearing into the animal’s hide, and sweat beaded on her brow as the images rose and fell in her periphery.

She butchered the meat and strung the hide up in a tree up the hill. It would have to wait for morning. A trickling spring replenished her canteen and carried away the blood from her hands, her hair. The smoke rising from the chimney curled around tree limbs and swallowed the stars above. Her throat suddenly tightened, emotion welling from her chest. It was unnamable, a wide-eyed awe her body wasn’t unaccustomed to, as if the world had opened its arms to embrace her for the first time.

Inside she dropped meat into the heated pan and her mouth watered at the sizzle. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Anya slipped off her boots and stretched her legs. Her eyes, once again, landed on the small chest on the floor. She had always been defiant, and it rose in her now, to deny this object her attention. Eat first.

The clasps on the chest appeared unusually shiny, as if the dust of the years merely slid off, finding no purchase. She licked her fingers, still tasting her dinner, and flipped open the lid. Anya swayed on her knees, as if the room had tilted, the smell once again hitting her afresh. Before she knew what she was doing, she had reached in and pulled out the object on top. A leather belt. It felt more solid in her hands than any object she’d held before, as if everything else in the world was illusion and this the only real thing. There were thirteen etchings in the leather, symbols and lines, whose significance she couldn’t fathom. She ran her fingers over the iron buckle, warm to the touch. Three interlocking circles.

This was hers. She knew it as certainly as she knew the lines on her own palms, cutting deep like rivers through calloused terrain. Her hands shook with the knowledge, of this truth that could not be.

As her fingers pressed against the leather, she drew it to her face, tears beginning to well in her eyes, and suddenly the dark room filled with light. A burst so violent she fell backward, gasping. The light pierced her chest, an arrow through her heart leaving her stunned. And then, as suddenly as it appeared, the light left. As if she’d been drawn into an embrace and then thrown aside. Anya rose to her knees, clutching the belt to her belly, and wept.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenrys decides to look for Vaughan, who is trailing Anya. Manon makes her way to The Wastes.

Fenrys smoothed the collar of his shirt, angling his head to let the morning light hit his scars. He ran his finger over one, his eyelids fluttering shut as the smell of his own blood soaking into the mud flooded his nostrils. The memory of Maeve’s attack existed in the space between thoughts, ever present, waiting for an opening.

The sound of a throat clearing pulled him back and he turned to find Aelin casually leaning against the door frame, something approaching a smile tugging at her lips, though sadness preceded it. “I’m getting used to them, your scars.”

“You miss yours?” He needn’t have asked. He knew the answer.

She nodded and looked down, her eyes unfocused. The scars she held now were visible to only Fenrys. He alone had recorded the months of agony she’d endured, her flesh rendered unrecognizable and stitched together over and over, reborn in nightmares.

Since they’d defeated Maeve and Erawan, she’d come to his rooms more and more. She didn’t come to remember the pain or dredge up the helpless terror of it, but to see him standing before her and know that they’d survived.

“You’re leaving.” A question.

“I need to find Vaughan.” Fenrys squared his shoulders, facing his queen.

“Does he want to be found?” she asked, not voicing the worry deep inside her that he would use this mission to disappear. That her presence was only a reminder to him of the nightmare.

“He found a way to stay far away from the war, far away from Maeve, despite the blood oath. He fought it, knowing she’d use him in a heartbeat to hurt us. And he didn’t let that happen. I owe him thanks, and I owe him the truth. I want him to hear from me what happened.”

Fenrys’s face began to change, morphing into the confident, strikingly beautiful male that was as much a weapon as any of his other powers. Aelin grinned at him. “Anything else?”

He smirked, a twinkle in his eye. “We’ll see.”

* * *

 

Vaughan strolled by the stables at the edge of the town, stopping just past the wide-open doors where stable hands brushed down horses and cleaned out the stalls, the routine of work a balm to all after the uncertainty and bloodshed of the war. He’d trailed the men from the inn, their voices increasing in volume with each successive drink. Now, they were leaning against the stable beams, continuing their conversation while their horses were readied. Vaughan edged closer.

“If it’s true, if The Wastes are truly habitable again - “

“If! You’re so quick to believe this. I want to see it for myself,” his friend interrupted.

“Of course! Hitch a ride with the witches. I heard they love being questioned by humans.”

“All right, fine. Say you’re right. What’s your point?”

“My point is, they will be rebuilding their kingdom. Rifthold is rebuilding. Damn near everyone is rebuilding. There are huge opportunities for supply routes and trade.”

“And how do you propose we get in?”

“Word is, the witches will convene in Briarcliff to work out boundaries and such, to see what’s become of the land now that the curse is gone. Ansel’s army was crushed, so they’re hurting too. We start there.”  

Vaughan had been moving from town to town, inn to inn, in the weeks after the war, trying to gauge the climate. The land had been devoured by evil, the darkness leaving its mark everywhere. Though victory had been declared, the people had lost so much, had been trampled by horrors previously unimaginable, and whatever peace meant, it did not heal the wounds unseen.

His body had crumbled to the ground, stunned on the day Maeve was vanquished. The blood oath evaporating into mist leaving him cast out to the sea, a rudderless raft in an ocean. To live for so long with that tie, with his will subject to her whims, he’d lost sight of the part of himself that steered his own actions.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, seeking out the connection with the others. He’d felt his heart stutter in his chest twice in the last few months. Were two of them truly gone? Rowan’s power was too great to pass with so little fanfare. Rowan would split the sky should he fall. He let himself imagine the others, trying to feel the invisible webbing strung between them all, but with the blood oath gone, he couldn’t feel them, couldn’t sense their presence in the world.

It wasn’t Fenrys. Fenrys lived. Of that he was doubtless. He conjured an image of his friend in his mind and felt a warmth flood his chest. A passerby would see it as a blush, but Vaughan had no such vantage point. Beneath the warmth was a sharp ache. He tried not to dwell on it. Tried not to imagine what it meant, what pain Fenrys may have been in to sully his life force so completely that Vaughan could feel it.

He’d find his friend once more. Soon. But not yet. Not until he found the witch again.

* * *

 

“Don’t waste my time.” Anya tossed the coin bag back at the shop owner. She’d been to him a few times since the war ended, and he’d given her a decent price for furs, but now, claiming hardship, he offered half. Her nostrils flared, smelling his fear. She didn’t think he knew her to be a witch, but the possibility existed.

“Half of my customers are working off credit right now. I’ve no more coin for you.”

He looked sincere and she briefly considered backing down and moving on, but something in his scent kept her from leaving. Before she’d arrived in the town, she’d noted the air turning. The unusually warm early days of winter were about to become brutal. The forests had grown silent as snow dusted fallen leaves and frost chiseled the edges of streams. “We’re due a storm. Those western clouds are heavy with it. You’ll have people begging for furs in the next week. You know I’m right.” She stared him down, unblinking.

He reached into the chest on the shelf and filled a bit more of the purse with coin and smirked as he handed it to her. “I hope you’re right.”

She would never consider herself warm, but despite her sometimes gruff demeanor, she did often find a way to entice people to overlook their misgivings, to wager their trust. If pressed she imagined this shop keep might even admit to liking her.

Anya tucked the coin bag into her satchel and nodded in thanks, then turned on her heel and headed back into the alley. She’d taken a meal at an inn and replenished her supplies, readying herself for the journey, one she’d not yet admitted to herself that she was on.

Two days prior she’d been sharpening her knife at the edge of a stream, shadowed under great oaks whose whorled limbs were heavy with frost. It started as a tingling at the top of her spine, a power sparking through her arms to her fingertips. Her hand drifted to the three-ringed belt she’d taken from the cabin and now wore at her waist. Seconds later the air shuddered with the heavy, deep rhythm of wyvern wings and looking overhead, she sat stunned as witches flew high above the trees.

Her muscles twitched, begging for her to stand, to run. Not away from them, but with them. She’d never seen them like this. Never felt the power of their presence. The familiarity. Her people.

Anya had heard rumors since the war. Rumors of the curse of The Wastes, broken. Of the queen who’d joined the kingdoms together. Of a new beginning. And for the first time in her life, she let herself imagine she might belong somewhere.

The witches had flown by into the setting sun and she had risen, her shadow chasing them.

The townspeople flowed around her now, like water splitting over a stone midstream. Shoulders set, she began walking toward the stables. She’d preferred to be on foot for hunting, but The Wastes were vast. No time for walking.

“I need a horse.” A rather obvious thing to say to the stable master.

He brushed his hands on his pants, straw dust drifting up through the light. “I suppose you’re at the right place then. Assuming you have the coin.”

She gave a subtle jingle with her satchel and crossed her arms over her chest. “I need endurance, not speed.” The Wastes might be a mystery, unknown dangers and miles of nothing, but she knew there would be no sprinting.

* * *

 

Vaughan found himself digging his fingers into the fencepost, limbs locked into place as he tried to process her presence. He’d smelled her before he’d heard her. How could she be here? Had some god stayed behind to guide him to her? Or did he need to begin believing in luck?

He’d heard her request, for a horse to cover long distances, and a panic rose in his chest. She was going to The Wastes. And he’d need to follow her. Away from the kingdoms where his friends were rebuilding without him. Away from Fenrys, wherever he may be. But he wouldn’t abandon her. Not now.

He knew what he needed to do.

Vaughan straightened his vest, scoffing at himself for worrying about how he looked. He then calmly stepped around the corner and up the ramp into the stables, nodding to the stable master. “Just going to have a look.” He walked to the end where Anya was packing her bags onto her newly purchased horse and attempted to look interested in the horse next to hers. She paid him no mind.

“Fine animal you’ve got there. Long journey ahead?” He didn’t have quite the intimidating presence some of his cadre brothers did, but it was a rare occasion that his fae strength was not acknowledged upon a first meeting.

Anya looked up from tying on her bags and let her eyes lazily trail up his body until they settled on his own, entirely unfazed. “Hmph.”

He hadn’t expected it to be easy. “Well if you’re heading west, take care through the mountain passes. Still lots of miscreants taking advantage of the instability.” He could have sworn something approximating a smile tugged at her lips. He was amusing her.

“Are you purchasing a horse?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

“I think I might. Yes.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt himself off balance. She knew.

“Why don’t you just fly?”

* * *

 

“Abraxos! Down!” Manon had yelled at him to dive down, as if he hadn’t already seen what was just coming in to focus for her. Her flying lid had been down, blurring her vision, but she raised it to get a better look. She still couldn’t see much, but the smell grew stronger as they descended through the clouds.

Green. Life.

She’d been flying over the eastern edge of The Wastes, refusing to give voice to her fear that somehow it wasn’t real. She needed to see it for herself. To really know. The land was exactly as she’d feared at first. Arid and barren, an ugly scar. It had smelled stale, a lifeless nothing. But then it hit her. While faint, the distinct smell of flora, of water flowing over rocks, of life pressing through cracked earth washed over her.

Abraxos landed hard, his feet thudding and kicking up dust. Manon jumped off his back before he’d stopped, her legs propelled by hope. The hill rose before her, jagged brown rocks ruptured through packed sand and soil. No green. But the smell was still there, rippling through the wind.

She sniffed again. Water. “You thirsty?” Abraxos tilted his head, blinking slowly as if to say, “What do you think?” Certainly, he smelled it too, but he waited for her to lead the way. He knew she needed this discovery.

Manon leapt up on a boulder and began scrambling over rocks, cutting sideways across the hill and then stopped, dropping to a crouch. She turned to look back at Abraxos, a smile growing on her face. She reached her hand down between some rocks and brought it back up in front of her face, water dripping down her skin and onto her sleeves, leaving dark spots in the dust-covered leathers. She grasped a rock and began pushing as hard she could against it. Abraxos moved closer to her and pressed his snout against the rock and finally it budged, letting loose the wellspring, bursting forth from the rock.

Abraxos drank greedily and Manon refilled her canteens. Before they moved on, she dipped her hands once more in the water and with her wet fingers, drew interlocking circles on the stone. “What do you think of this, Princeling?” She conjured his face in her mind, imagining his eyes alight at this moment.

The sun dropped below the crest of the hill, leaving them in shadow and she rose, ready to continue. Abraxos lowered next to her for her to climb on, but she waved him off. “No, not yet.” She needed to feel it under her feet, whatever they found on the other side of the hill.

They climbed, Abraxos humoring her by hopping from rock to rock, never straying too far. Her hands tore on the jagged edges of the rocks, feet losing purchase on loose stones. And her heart rattled inside her ribcage as they neared the peak. All the bloodshed and terror and loss, falling into the dust behind her.

A gust of wind roared over the hill just as she rose above the summit and it stole her breath. Home. It smelled like home.

Manon stood at the very top, looking west over the Wastes and saw a sight she never even let herself dream of. In the distance, past the last of the broken, dying land, was life. A river, newly carved through dust, now banked by green. Shrubs dotted the land, curling over boulders. New trees stretched their tiny limbs up to the sky. It was new and fragile and beautiful.

Her eyes stung, and her throat closed, hands shaking at her side. “Are you seeing this, Asterin?” In the corner of her vision, just to her left, Asterin’s golden hair loosened from her braid and fluttered across her face. On the edge of her vision to her right she could see the rest of them, standing tall along the peak.

Manon kept her gaze steady and straight ahead. The spirits of The Thirteen, at her side. The future of the kingdom, before her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anya makes her way toward The Wastes and runs into Vaughan again. Manon makes a surprising discovery while she's flying through a storm. Fenrys continues to track Vaughan.

Anya had not looked again at the fae male while she secured her belongings on the new horse. But she felt his eyes on her the entire time. This was not a new feeling. He had watched her from a distance for as long as she could remember. Sometimes in his shifted form, circling high above. Sometimes as a fae trying to blend in to the background of the world. She tried not to be insulted that he thought she wouldn’t notice.

She led the horse out of the barn and ran her hand over his neck giving him an appreciative pat. Upon settling into the saddle and giving him a moment to adjust, she steered him toward the setting sun. The pedestrians slowly disappeared as she left the town behind, and soon the only sounds were the horse’s hooves clacking over stones, and the wind whistling through aspens. She spied no osprey peering through the tree canopy. The horse slowed at some rough terrain. “Come on...”

It hadn’t occurred to Anya until that moment that she didn’t know the horse’s name. “Everyone needs a name, hm? What’ll you be then?” She lowered her head until it rested against his mane, breathing him in. “Firinn. You’ll be my truth. Wherever we end up, wherever this road leads.”

Firinn huffed and anxiously fidgeted waiting for Anya’s signal and when she gave it, he took off a little quicker than before, as if a new bond had been forged in his naming and his pleasure spurred him on. She smiled into the wind.

The land began to flatten as they headed west. The trees were still thick, and streams criss-crossed their path, slowing their pace considerably. She would push on just a little farther and then settle for the night.

A small clearing with moss underfoot lied at the base of a rock face and Firinn halted, seeming as certain of the stop as she was. She led him to the stream down the hill and set up camp. She’d spent more nights under the stars than she could count, but this one felt different. The uncertainties, the mysteries of her life that had formed the shape of her world, now settled before her, lining a path toward her future.

Her senses crackled, each sound sharp and clear, the outline of the trees in the blue twilight tinged with a purple glow. The forest floor shimmered with life scurrying below the fallen leaves. She lit a fire and when its flames rose high enough, she flicked out her iron nails, shivering at the surge of strength that accompanied them. Her body itched to fight. To tear into something.

She had spent her entire life afraid of this beast inside her, but now she began to imagine it not as a beast, but rather as a warrior. A hunter. A defender. Anya slid an iron nail across her belt buckle and her heart stuttered, heat flooding her skin. The truth of who she was had begun to awaken.

A crack of a twig jolted her from her thoughts and she looked up, eyes flashing as adrenaline flooded her veins.

“I mean no harm.” Vaughan stood still, his arms loose at his sides, just within the fading light of the campfire.

Anya slowly rose, her nails still glinting against her buckskins. “What _do_ you mean then?”

Vaughan took a tentative step forward, his eyes never leaving hers. When she nodded her assent, he dropped his rucksack and settled on a rock a few feet away from hers. “I have brought something for you.”

He began to reach into his bag when she raised a hand to still him.

“How long?”

His head was still lowered, and his eyes glanced up at her, shadowed by his long lashes.

“How long have you been watching me?”

He let out a long breath, his shoulders dropping. Vaughan stared into the fire for a moment, silent. “Since you were born.”

* * *

 

Dorian’s invisible hands grasped Manon’s thighs, stretching and kneading her pliant flesh, holding her still below him while he swallowed her moans as they left her throat. She arched into him and moved her own hand between them to angle him but stopped at the feel of wetness on her face. Water flowed over Dorian’s hair, dripping down his cheeks until it dropped onto her chest, warmed from his skin. He gasped as she moved against him again and his eyes widened. “Where are you?”

Manon woke with a start, suddenly aware of the damp ground beneath her, becoming increasingly drenched by the second. Abraxos stirred next to her, his wing shielding her from most of the rain, but it had begun dripping off the edge of his wing onto her chest. She quickly sat up and repositioned herself, looking for any other place they could move to escape the deluge, but this land was still growing new life. Trees were not yet fully grown, mere saplings. They’d wedged against some boulders, but no shelter was to be found. At least she had Abraxos.

She pulled at her shirt, still feeling exposed as she had been in her dream. Abraxos snorted and she shot him a look. “Don’t say a word.”

Manon had left the Crochans in the dead of night. She hadn’t known how to live without The Thirteen. Every moment felt disjointed. Incomplete. A missing limb. She had asked Dorian what this was, this feeling. His eyes had gone dark, shadowed by his own grief that had slowly been loosening its grip on him.

“Sorrow.” He never looked at her pityingly, and she was grateful for it. She’d have hated him if he ever bestowed such a thing on her.

This sorrow slumbered in her bones, waking unexpectedly. A scent carried on the breeze that might have been Ghislane’s herbs she boiled on cold mornings. A dancing flame in her campfire matching the color of Vesta’s hair. A small tree’s shadow cast upon the ground next to her that made her think for a moment Asterin was there by her side. And the sorrow seeped from bone to blood to muscle until her entire body was aching with it.

So, she left to find her new home. To be beholden to no one for just a short while, before the kingdom began to rebuild. Before she took her place on the throne, the new witch queen.

Dorian had been creeping into her dreams with each passing day. In the violent dreams, the memories of the battle, he was flying through the sky with her, blood splattered and eyes wild. In the quieter dreams he drifted through her world, watching her, whispering to her, little more than a voice in her ear. Lately the dreams had taken another turn. Perhaps her body needed a release. She’d managed it herself, but it was never enough. The dreams had gotten more urgent, his body more real. She swore now she could smell him on her skin.

“You want to fly out of this mess?” Abraxos shivered in anticipation at her question. Manon stood and let the rain pelt her shoulders as she surveyed the horizon. The air smelled rich and green and teeming with life. The sorrow settled back in her bones and she patted Abraxos’s flank. “Let’s go.”

They rocketed into the stinging rain, the moonless night swallowing them in darkness. Higher Abraxos rose, looking for the cloud line. The air thinned and cooled, but the rain did not cease. Manon felt the cold penetrating her skin, sending shivers through her, and she angled Abraxos to the south, hoping to find a reprieve. A crack of lightning too close sent a buzzing current through her and Abraxos dove down, not willing to risk that altitude. Another crack lit up the earth below them as they descended, and Manon stiffened at what she saw.

“Down, now!” she yelled, a nervous excitement ran through her. She leapt from the saddle as they hit the ground and her boots squelched through the muddy terrain. She could barely make out the rocks but could feel their cold exterior interrupting the air.

Distant lightning illuminated the way in flashes of light, a stuttering progress in the inky blackness. Her hands moved over the slick rock until it disappeared, the cave opening emitting a musty smell. An ancient stillness surrounding the entrance. It was just large enough for Abraxos to follow her in. The larger wyverns couldn’t have managed it.

Manon’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark and she was startled to realize there was light coming from the walls of the cave. A faint, shimmering glow snaking through the cracks in the rock. It seemed to only exist when she didn’t look at it directly, as if it followed her movements and hid under her gaze.

She continued walking deeper into the cave and felt the air shift, a warm breath tinged with iron. The cave walls fell away to reveal a chamber with a pool, the water spilling down from a crack a few feet up the wall. Abraxos moved to the center of the room, stretching his wings and flicking water off them, splattering Manon, who huffed in his direction.

A pressure grew in her chest, a thread pulling. She slowly moved toward the wall and the smell of iron flooded her nostrils. Manon stopped and extended her hand, not knowing why she was doing it. As her hand fell upon the ore, her fingers crackled and the lights she’d seen in her periphery blazed into the iron ore before her. Symbols and letters lit up from the point of her fingertips until they covered the entire wall before her.

Sucking in a breath, she withdrew her hand and the lights disappeared. Manon turned back to Abraxos, her body shaking. “Did you see it?” His blank look in return gave her his answer. She lifted her hand again and pressed her palm against the wall. The images and words returned, and she let her eyes roam, taking them in. She saw the names of her ancestors, of covens long disappeared. She saw maps and renderings of creatures she’d never seen before. She saw valg eyes and iron nails and mirrors. She saw the birth of the first witch and the field of blood outside the witch kingdom. The story of the witches reflecting off her eyes.

* * *

 

Fenrys shook the snow from his fur. It had begun falling an hour ago, making it easier for him to blend in to his surroundings, but undoubtedly hampering his tracking. He’d caught Vaughan’s scent fifty miles back and now found himself deep in the forest. He leapt over some moss-covered boulders and waded through a stream, taking a moment to lap up some water. The scent disappeared again for a bit until he found a tree heavy with it. Fenrys imagined Vaughan here, his silver hair gleaming in the sunlight filtering through the trees. _He had been gone for so long._ _Why here?_

He continued up the hill and other scents filled the air. Another creature. A woman. Death. The remnants of a fire. Fenrys stepped into the clearing and shifted, the sight catching him by surprise. A cabin, long neglected but recently used, frosted with snow. No smoke rose from the chimney and he scented no creatures nearby. _Had Vaughan stayed here?_

Fenrys opened the door to the cabin and his nostrils flared. Vaughan had certainly been in here. As had a female. A flutter of jealousy moved through him and he breathed deeply, annoyed at himself for feeling such a thing. His eyes fell on the small bed, it’s blanket tattered and faded. “What were you doing here?” he whispered into the silence.

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vaughan tells Anya the story of how he found her and why he's followed her throughout her life and they have a visitor.

“Since I was born?” Anya snorted and turned back to the fire, shaking her head. “Well, I’m sorry you thought that was a good way to spend your life. I’m sure my flailing attempts to survive have provided years of amusement for you.”

He scowled at her deprecation, wishing he could show her every moment he watched so she might see what he had seen. So she might know what a fierce and clever creature she was.

The flames of the fire flickered shadows over her cheekbones and her face hardened, a veneer of sadness chiseling the line of her jaw. “I am Anya, which I suppose you already know.”

He nodded, eyes carefully watching her. “Vaughan.”

“The osprey.”

“Yes.”

Her lips curled up and parted, but she hesitated, the words battling on the tip of her tongue. There were too many questions and no way to know where to begin. Instead of asking any of them, she turned fully toward him. “What do you have for me?”

Vaughan kept his movements slow, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a rolled bit of leather tied with string. He slowly unrolled it and pulled out a sheet of paper, weathered and rough around the edges. He held it out to her.

She kept her eyes fixed on him for a moment, trying to understand what now could be important enough for him to break his silence after all these years. She pulled the paper to her lap and held the curled edges open. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the image. It was her. But not exactly. The hair was hers, the eyes, but the lips were different, thinner and wider. It wasn’t overly detailed, rough strokes bleeding into the paper. Her hands shook the longer she held it.

“I don’t understand. Is this - “

“ - No. It’s not you,” Vaughan answered. His voice quiet and tentative.

Her brows furrowed as she met his gaze.

“I think it may be your mother.” His voice had trailed off as he spoke, the final word little more than a whisper on the wind.

Anya flinched, as if slapped. The word encompassing all the love, loss, and fear of her life. “And you know this how?”

He tilted his head at her and anger rose in her belly at the pity she felt emanating from him.

His eyes flicked down to her belt, to the interlocking circles. “The same way you know that was meant for you.”

Anya stood suddenly, the paper clutched tight between her fingers. She turned from him, away from the fire, pacing angrily.

“I found it in -”

“ - Stop talking! Just…” Her body vibrated with tension, a crackling fire within her. “You say you’ve watched me since I was born. Are you… Are you my -”

“ - I’m not your father, Anya.”

She laughed, a sound he’d not expected. “Well that’s good. Would have expected you to say hello otherwise.” She stopped her pacing, and rolled her shoulders, facing him. “How, then, were you watching me since I was born? Why?”

Vaughan leaned forward, his arms resting on his thighs. He waited for Anya to sit before he began. “I had been meeting with a magistrate in Anielle. Spying, you might say. I’d been there for a week and was ready to leave. My final task before departing the region was to fly by Blackbeak Keep, to get a read on what the witches were doing. There had been a number of attacks lately.”

The fire angrily spit flames in the air as Anya tossed a log onto it. She tried to look relaxed, but the uneasy anticipation of his story pulled the lines of her body taut.

“I took to the air and watched. There was a flurry of activity around one of the entrances inside the keep, servants coming and going, and I could smell blood. Fresh blood. I heard screams, agony.”

Anya’s head shot up and she looked at him intently, anger and fear dancing over her features.

Vaughan continued. “Some time later I saw a woman leave. She wasn’t a witch. She reeked of fear and that blood. The screaming had turned to wailing. I watched as the woman quickly made her way to the outer walls of the keep. She went through a door and appeared outside the walls a minute later, frantically looking around. Just as it seemed she would run, a witch came at her yelling. I saw her bend down by some bushes and when she straightened, the witch was there, her hands around the woman’s throat. She pulled her back inside the keep. But I could still smell that blood. I dove down to a low branch near the bushes and I saw something. Tiny, unmoving, bloody. I swooped down and grabbed it with my talons and took it out of their sight.”

He glanced at Anya and the words caught in his throat. His first glimpse of that face had been only of the tip of her nose peeking through the wadded, bloodied rags. Her skin had a lifeless pall then, when he’d first shifted back to his fae form and pulled the rags from her face. He had been too late, he thought. He’d berated himself for interfering, a reckless impulse.

Anya closed her eyes, imagining the scene he described. His words shouldn’t have carried emotional weight. These witches he spoke of meant nothing to her, and yet his words draped themselves over her. _Agony. Screams. Wailing._ Her chest was being pried open slowly as he spoke. She looked down at the drawing in her hands, unable to imagine what she must have looked like screaming, her witchling wrenched from her womb and thrown away.

Vaughan cleared his throat and continued. “I thought I was too late. I thought you were dead.”

She closed her eyes, unable to look at him.

“Then I heard you breathing, just barely. I touched my hand to your chest and I could see something in you, something blocking your airway. I...healed you. And your breaths grew stronger. Your skin grew pink. And then you cried. I asked you to stop so the witches wouldn’t hear but you didn’t listen.” He looked at her and saw her tightly smiling, her lashes shimmering with unshed tears.

“I wrapped you up and flew as fast as I could back to a village I’d passed through. There had been a woman there who’d lost a baby and I thought…”

Anya looked at him when he stopped speaking and was surprised to find his face in his hands, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. She walked to him and gently placed her hand on his shoulder, a feather-light touch, her words of thanks caught in her throat.

He placed his own hand gently over hers, and she let him. So rarely in their lives had they experienced touch that did not come from rage or fear, in the desperate clawing of survival, or a more impersonal need, as in the frenzied grasps of coupling. This touch, for both, was both thanks and a promise. Whatever god had crossed their lives, they were now inextricably intertwined.

The heavy, cold air of the mountains had begun to give way to the bitter, dry winds on the eastern edge of the Witch Kingdom. Fenrys shook the moisture from his fur before it froze and stepped carefully to the edge of the dropoff, his front paws splaying over the slick stone. His nose twitched as the wind carried Vaughan’s scent to him, though he had to stifle a growl at the other scent accompanying it.

The two scents had overlapped again and again as he tracked Vaughan, but rarely did it seem they were together. Now, smelling them both so close, his skin prickled, a primal protective urge surging through him. He should have shifted earlier. He felt himself dangerously close to a dark, angry place that had grown inside him.

His eyes narrowed as he took in the sight below him. He’d not have believed it if Vaughan himself had told him. The thought of his friend with a witch, their hands joined, was impossible. Not Vaughan.

He slunk back away from the edge and moved as quickly and quietly as he could so he could shift without notice. His hands shook at his side and he grasped his cloak to still them. Whatever this was, he had to face it.

Fenrys gave their camp a wide berth and came to them from the other direction so his scent would reach Vaughan first. He could see them ahead through the trees, the low flames of their fire making their shadows dance against the rock face. Vaughan suddenly straightened and faced his direction, hand tensed on the knife at his hip.

“It’s just me, Vaughan.” He walked slowly toward them, eyes never wavering. The witch held her bow at the ready, but aimed at the ground, deferring to Vaughan. As Fenrys stepped into the light, a ripple of emotion spread over Vaughan’s face and his throat bobbed, a breath escaping him.

“Fenrys.” Vaughan’s mouth stayed slightly open, more words struggling to find their way.

“Sorry for interrupting. I just… Well, we’ve some stories to share it seems.” He kept his face as relaxed as he could, the cool facade of nonchalance he’d practiced for so long. But it broke when Vaughan tilted his head and let his lips curl up into a smile Fenrys could only describe as delicious. He smiled back, a genuine, beaming smile he hadn’t worn in too long.

Vaughan stepped forward and pulled Fenrys to him, breathing him in. “She’s gone?” he asked into his ear.

“She’s gone.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manon meets with the other witches to begin building the kingdom. Fenrys tells Vaughan what happened when he was imprisoned by Maeve and Anya decides it's time to get to the Witch Kingdom.

The white walls of Briarcliff rose from the stone upon which the city was built, a formidable fortress long withstanding the ravages of salt and sand and witches. Manon’s nostrils flared as the smell of the sea mingled with the new vegetation springing up on the renewed ground. It never grew old, this wonder at life bursting forth from this once-cursed place.

A barracks on the outskirts of the walls had been commissioned as neutral ground where the witches gathered around an ancient table, scarred from soldier’s knives lazily scoring its flesh. Abraxos fidgeted as Manon left him outside, huffing a hot, agitated breath against her back as she turned.

“Settle down. There’s work to be done.” The calm in her voice did not reach her chest. She quivered inside, not from fear or some misplaced worry, but from the enormity of it all. The witch kingdom alive and poised to rise from the ashes. Slowly she reached into her satchel and pulled out the crown, the stars pulsing in her hand. Placing it upon her head, she walked to the doors. The guards pulled them open for her, dipping their heads, and she was met with a hush, the voices of the gathered swallowed by starlight.

The clack of her boots upon the stone floor. The scrape of wood as Bronwyn rose. These sounds barely registered to Manon as she turned to Bronwyn, a hint of a smile pulling at her lips. The other witch raised her fingers to her brow, just as The Thirteen had once done, and Manon fought the sorrow choking her. Fought and lost as the other witches in the room, Bluebloods, Blackbeaks, and Crochans alike, followed suit. Ansel sat at the other end of the table, her eyes alight.  Bronwyn gestured to the chair at the end of the table and Manon took it, nodding to the witches.

Ansel leaned forward, her arms braced on the table, eyes resting on Manon. “Welcome home.”

* * *

 

“Will you tell me about the scars?” Vaughan dropped down from the rock to the soft carpet of lichen below where Fenrys sat, cross-legged and still.  He mirrored his friend’s pose, sitting at his side, drawing a deep breath infused with the damp, loamy ground beneath them, the air crisp and charged with the energy of life pushing through the mountain’s chill.

“Not much to tell. Maeve being Maeve. Didn’t care for my sparring attempts.” There was no humor in his voice. It was flat and listless and utterly unlike him.

“I can guess how you got them. I’m just wondering why you didn’t heal them.”

Fenrys leapt to his feet and walked straight ahead, deftly hopping over a stream running slick over stones and dead leaves, his long legs churning up the ground beneath his boots. Vaughan was at his side instantly, soundlessly, his hand grasping Fenrys’s cloak and drawing him close. Vaughan brought his hand to his friend’s face, his thumb tracing the line of the scar.

Fenrys’s eyes closed and his breathing slowed, but it was not peaceful. A tremor ran under his skin. “When they hurt her, they did it so brutally, so destructively, that they could not simply heal her. She was too broken. The magic they used to rebuilt her, the skin itself was entirely new. All her scars and marks, all the proof of her strength and will, was erased.”

“And you think keeping this scar is proof of something?” Vaughan asked quietly.

His breath shuddered and his eyes flew open, looking through Vaughan, who still held his face. Slowly Fenrys blinked. Four times.

“Fenrys.”

His eyes focused finally on Vaughan, his brow drawn inward. “No, not for me. For her.”

“Aelin.”

“Yes. I am the only one, the only one who knows her story now, who has seen and remembers it. Her skin doesn’t remember it. Her mind is uncertain of any of it. But I was there, and I witnessed it and I’ll bear the scars that she can’t.”

Tears stung Vaughan’s eyes, an unexpected gust of wind catching his breath. Fenrys has been alone, forced to watch the torture. Alone while he ran free, while he found new ways to disappear, a selfish, cowardly creature. “Gods, I should have returned! I could have -”

“- No, you couldn’t! She would have used you, Vaughan. She would have commanded you to do horrible things or just killed you in front of me. If she knew -”

If she knew. The wind began swirling around them, a whistling whirling dance of leaves and seeds sent scattering. Vaughan unsheathed his knife from his belt and held it up between them. His voice shook. “Show me.”

“No!” Fenrys pushed against him, but Vaughan grabbed him, holding him tightly, daring him to fight. Fenrys snarled. “I will not do that to you!”

“You must. Fenrys, let me share this with you. You don’t have to be the only one. Show me and you will forever be able to look at me and know. Know that I was there too, that the scars are not yours alone.” His cheeks quivered, teeth grinding. “Show me.”

If Maeve had known that the wind carried them to each other wherever they were, that their souls were held together, a thread weaving its way between them in the darkest night. If she had known, she would have destroyed them.

Fenrys took the knife and turned Vaughan’s palm up. The tip of the knife split the skin and blood welled to the surface, a deep line carving a red river. Fenrys drew the knife across his own skin and quickly flattened his palm against Vaughan’s and pulled him tightly to him, their hands braced between their chests. Vaughan buried his face in Fenrys’s neck and gasped, shaking.

“Don’t be afraid,” Fenrys whispered.

The images flooded Vaughan’s mind, a tidal wave of horror, of endless cries and darkness, of shattered bones and limbs bound and burning. The smells flooded his nostrils and he gagged against Fenrys’s skin.

“Stay with me. I am with you.”

When it was over, when Vaughan’s body fell to the ground in a heap of sweat and gasping breaths, Fenrys sprinkled grey shavings from a pouch at his waist over the cuts on their hands, the skin bubbling and closing, leaving scars to mark them. He wrapped himself around Vaughan’s curled frame and they slept.

* * *

 

Anya pulled the saddle bag straps tight and patted Firinn’s neck, glancing once more around the campsite for anything she might have forgotten. Fenrys and Vaughan had disappeared a couple hours ago, but she doubted they’d gone far. They seemed to have some unfinished business to deal with and she was happy to give them the space. She was also happy, she was forced to admit to herself, to have the company.

The years of her life since leaving her mother’s home had melted into one, a persistent stab of loneliness. An ache of knowing she belonged somewhere else.

She had considered, more than once, going to the witches. Throwing herself at their mercy and hoping they’d adopt her to their coven, but she had also heard stories. Too many stories of vicious cruelty. Of mindless violence and intricate rules that she’d no hope of knowing. It was better to go it alone.

But after the war, when word began to spread of what the witches had done to defeat the darkness, fighting other covens even, of how some had given themselves to the yielding, she allowed herself hope. Hope that something had changed, and she might find a place in the new witch kingdom.

It was time.

Anya pulled the folded drawing of her mother from her bag once more, tracing the jawline, drawing her finger along her own skin, trying to imagine what it would be like to look into the eyes of someone who had given her life. It was like trying to see a ghost.

A smattering of birds took flight from a nearby pine and she looked past it to see Vaughan and Fenrys ascending the hill looking a bit worse for wear. Their eyes were dark, skin pale and speckled with dirt, but despite it, they were serene. And when Fenrys climbed up the last bit of rock to Anya’s level, he held his hand out to Vaughan, helping him up and his hand did not let go.

She eyed their joined hands curiously and smiled. “Ready?”

Vaughan smirked and looked at Fenrys. “Let’s go.”


End file.
